Tips For Cleansing Your Pantry

Do you find yourself eating healthful foods at mealtime, then raiding the pantry between meals and eating too much sugar or processed foods? Do you resort to fast food on nights when you get home late and don’t have time to cook? Follow these recommendations to optimize your food selection in your pantry to support healthful eating.

Throw out all the crap.

The Obvious: get rid of any leftover holiday goodies (the holidays are over, let it go!), boxes of cookies, bags of chips, and any other candy-like foods you have.

Throw out anything containing artificial sweeteners- aspartame, sucralose, and saccharine. Also toss the Truvia- it isn’t real stevia and contains other chemicals.

The Less Obvious: throw out any salad dressings, peanut butters, crackers, etc that are made with soy or corn oil, hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils. Also, get rid of any bottle of vegetable oil you may be harboring.

Get rid of expired foods– spices lose their flavor and shouldn’t be kept longer than 2 years (that is even generous!). Check the expiration date and throw out anything that’s past due. If you haven’t eaten it yet, chances are you aren’t going to!

Having a less cluttered pantry means you can easily see what you have and use it

Restock with healthful foods.

The basics:

Dried or canned beans

Whole wheat or bean pasta

Brown rice, quinoa, or other whole grain

Raw nuts such as almonds, walnuts, and cashews

Raw seeds such as chia, hemp and pumpkin

Real nut butter – the ingredients should be the nut, and maybe salt. Period.

Whole grain or seed crackers – Mary’s are great!

Dried fruit – unsweetened or sweetened with apple juice is best

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Coconut Oil

Vinegar – apple cider, balsamic, rice, etc.

Herbs and spices – single herbs and spices are less likely to have additives.

Raw honey

Organic teas and/or coffee

The Super Convenient:

Pacifica boxed or Amy’s canned soups

Instant oatmeal (plain of course!)

Whole food protein bars – Kind Bars, Rx Bars, GoMacro, etc

Olive oil based premade salad dressings

70% of darker chocolate bar (for when you need something sweet)

There are so many healthy snack choices that can be made from the above ingredients, as well as the core of a healthy, quick dinner.